Wrentham May Not Use Free Cash in 2014

Town administrator William Ketcham told selectmen on Tuesday Wrentham has at this point enough revenue not to use free cash in the fiscal year 2014 budget.

Free cash is a term used to describe extra one-time use funds in the town’s budget. Last year, the town used $760,000 to supplement operational costs that weren't themselves a one-time use.

“I strongly urge that free cash should be saved or devoted to capital spending, which would be non-repeated spending rather than put into our operational costs,” Ketcham said. “There is no need for free cash.”

While selectmen agreed using free cash to substitute yearly incoming revenue is a bad idea, quitting “cold turkey” may not be good for the town.

“We’ve been using free cash for the last few years,” said selectman Stephen Langley. “It reached a high of $760,000 last year. I think the ability to ease our transition of the use of free cash would be behoove us to use a small amount of it. I think we need just a little bit of weening off of free cash.”

Selectmen chair Joseph Botaish agreed, saying the town could start with a percentage to help ease the transition.

“If we took 20-percent of our free cash and put it into our budget to service our needs it could help,” he said. “There are a lot of requests… certainly far more than we could take care of in all free cash. Twenty-percent of our free cash would be a comfortable number.”

With free cash currently hoverin gin the $896,000 range (it was $996,000 before the Feb. 8 snowstorm), an estimate for that 20 percent of the free cash usage would be about $180,000.

Selectman Michael Carroll disagreed, saying anything paid for in the fiscal year 2014 budget with free cash, is very likely to be cut the next year.

“It has to be sustainable,” he said. “If you add things back now you’re going to have to cut them back out possibly one or two years later. Free cash is not a predictable number. If you use it to balance the budget, you’re going to have to cut some things down the line.”

Ketcham said while he is sympathetic to the large number of budget requests from all the departments, the town’s projected growth in revenue, monies that would come in year to year, should be taken into account.

“There may be no objection to funding some worthwhile items; it’s probably unavoidable in this economy, but certainly keep in mind of the revenue table, our actual growth between two years,” he said.

Ketcham said the current growth for Wrentham is between $850,000 and $998,000.